FBI: Pa. man relayed terror group messages

PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors say an Afghan doctor who lives in Philadelphia tried to relay secret messages for an anti-western terror group, but he denies the charge.

The FBI has charged 62-year-old Hayatullah Dawari with immigration fraud and says he lied on a 2013 application for U.S. citizenship. At a Friday hearing Dawari said he was “absolutely not guilty,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Prosecutors say Dawari passed coded messages from an Afghan group with links to al-Qaida. FBI agents discovered the documents written in Pashto and hidden between glued pages of religious tracts mailed to Dawari’s Philadelphia home.

Dawari is a permanent legal resident of the United States. He has not been charged with terrorist activity and his lawyer says the government inflated a simple immigration case.